City of Oceanside Tackling Marine Debris

Posted by Andrew Bleier on August 21, 2018.

It is no secret that marine debris is an issue worldwide. Spend any time on Facebook and you will find viral videos of people saving sea animals from the plastic wrapped around their bodies or animal’s stomachs filled with marine debris. Over at Oceanside Harbor in California, they have been working on cleaning marine debris by installing four Marina Trash Skimmers throughout the marina.

The Marina Trash Skimmer (MTS) is designed to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to clean the trash floating in water of marinas. The MTS is a commercial-grade product that can clean a multitude of debris including plastics, oil, trash, and micro plastics. The skimmer cycles through 300 gallons of water a minute to filter debris of every kind and improve the quality of the water. The skimmers are surprising affordable. You can contact Marina Accessories for pricing.

An example of the marine debris and garbage that the Marina Trash Skimmer can collect.

In 2014, the trash problem at Oceanside Harbor was brought to light through complaints from boat owners at the marina. Oceanside Harbor Manager, Pawl Lawrence and Harbor Maintenance Supervisor, Steve Rodriguez, brought in the idea of the MTS as a solution to this problem. In October 2015, they purchased two trash skimmers from Marina Accessories, which are now located at Dock U and Dock X.

Recently, we reached out to Rodriguez to see how the MTS is working for the facility. He was convinced of the benefits of the MTS when the skimmers was first installed.

“The skimmer did an unbelievable job of cleaning the water as well as removing the debris,” Rodriguez said. A huge success of the skimmer was the amount of debris removed.

The San Diego Union Tribune wrote an article about the accomplishment of the MTS in 2015 after the October installation. Rodriguez says the boaters were commenting on the effectiveness of the skimmer almost immediately, they couldn’t believe the change in the quality of the water.

In June 2016, two more skimmers were installed at the Coast Guard Dock and the Harbor Office Dock. Rodriguez commented on how incredible it was to see the amount of debris removed.

Rodriguez mentioned that he hopes to have another skimmer installed in the Oceanside Harbor area. He has learned from using the MTS is that if there is debris of any sort collecting in your marina, the MTS will clean it up for you.